Justifying Dissent

26 January 2023 10:35

Justifying Dissent

A new paper by Ingar K. Haaland titled "Justifying Dissent" published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics highlights both the power of rationales and their limitations in enabling dissent and shed light on phenomena such as social movements, political correctness, propaganda, and antiminority behavior.

Joint work with Leonardo BursztynGeorgy Egorov, Aakaash Rao and Christopher Roth.

Abstract:

Dissent plays an important role in any society, but dissenters are often silenced through social sanctions. Beyond their persuasive effects, rationales providing arguments supporting dissenters’ causes can increase the public expression of dissent by providing a “social cover” for voicing otherwise-stigmatized positions. Motivated by a simple theoretical framework, we experimentally show that liberals are more willing to post a Tweet opposing the movement to defund the police, are seen as less prejudiced, and face lower social sanctions when their Tweet implies they had first read credible scientific evidence supporting their position. Analogous experiments with conservatives demonstrate that the same mechanisms facilitate anti-immigrant expression. Our findings highlight both the power of rationales and their limitations in enabling dissent and shed light on phenomena such as social movements, political correctness, propaganda, and antiminority behavior.

Read the paper